


California Night

by action-cat (clytemnestras)



Category: Bandom, JJAMZ, PHASES (Band), The Like (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6485590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/action-cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time, for the last time, Z is the girl on the balcony</p>
            </blockquote>





	California Night

It’s cold, but LA cold, the kind of cold that still remembers summer and clings onto your skin like a thin sweater or superficiality. 

 

Z is bored, and bored is the one frightful thing she always promised to never become. Her balcony looks out over something and nothing, a cardiovascular system of McMansions and bitter pool boys who fucked their employer's wives for the tips, smiling at the overhanging cliffs like they’re hoping for a voyeur.

 

Z is bored, and she's half-dressed for the jazz bar they found on the corner of the high road and the cold is clinging to her skin and it's as though her life has crawled up to meet her old grown-up self to finally make her a real girl. She takes a drag of her cigarette, because frankly, being a real girl sucks. The stamp on the back of her hand feels like a brand and she thinks about branding herself, about slicking her skin up with permanent ink and all the things she should write there.

 

Coolest, she decides, is the best choice.  _ Oh Elizabeth, Z, darling, you may  just be the coolest person I’ve ever met.  _ It feels justified that the girl born from a psycho-seventies fingerfuck between Audrey Hepburn and Debbie Harry should be the coolest person in any room, letting thin trails of ash follow the swish of her minidress along the line of her cigarette holder where smoke bleeds like an aphrodisiac around her.

 

That retro-chic, black and white KT Tunstall goddamn girl, she's the coolest fucking thing this side of Hollywood, and she deserves to have that much if nothing else.

 

She takes another long drag.

 

There's someone else in the house, but she’s not sure who. The days blend. Tenn was here at some point, and Alex clings to her like a ghost of future promise or past regrets, and Langley, being Langley drifts around between one place and the next, paint in her hair, lipstick on her cheek.

 

_ Just kidding! _ She says, always says, parting Z’s lips like an exhaled breath and licking inside. Z’s been kidding for much longer though. Since Charlotte, maybe.

 

It’s enough, for now, that there’s another body occupying her space. Z thinks about how stepping off the balcony is only a cry for help if there’s someone to look for her after. She wouldn't, she won't, but it still fills her mind like the smoke does the night. Another body in space is just a way to keep coalesced.

 

These were the night Ryan lived for. Where they could stand in the dark and find their monstrosities and rip them open in the shared space. Sometimes she thinks of him like her favourite casualty. Tonight isn't one of them.

 

Her dress and her California-Blonde hair make her feel cliche, make her feel plastic and doll-like and a like page out of Less Than Zero with her big empty house and her vacuous blue eyes. 

 

Ellis is a total hack, anyway.

 

The breeze snuffs out the last of her cigarette and she drops it off the balcony just to see it fall. Z wonders if her houseguest is up, and if they want to play never have I ever, and if it's really as cold as she thinks it us up here or if it's just that LA melancholy rolling down the hills. 

  
It doesn't matter, she thinks, stripping off the dress and sliding the balcony door shut. By the time she falls asleep, everything is going to be alright.


End file.
